A few months ago, I was asked to be a guest teacher for Debbie Hodge's Masterful Scrapbooking Design. The topic was Design Play. Ever since I was a young whippersnapper, I have secretly wanted to be a designer, more specifically, a bulletin board designer (How to break a 3rd grader's heart? Tell her no such job exists.). Knowing I'd want to do some research to refresh my understanding of the topic, I quickly agreed. Well, I had a blast teaching the class in September, and this week's theme at W.C.S. is the result of that refresher course. Design is a very broad topic and with only one week, we won't be able to dig deep, today and tomorrow we'll talk about the elements and principles, then we'll spend Wednesday discussing composition, and Friday we'll be looking at the varieties of design out there. Hopefully you'll end the week knowing a little bit more about how design can influence your own scrapbooking.
As we begin, I'd like to point out that it seems everyone has a different list of what the elements and principles of design are, many of them are similar, but it's hard to find two that completely agreed. I even found a teaching website that confirmed my suspicion. So please be gentle with me. I am looking at the conglomerate, it may not agree with your opinions, but it gives you an idea.
First, there are the elements:
Hee, hee. Did I fool you? No, we won't be discussing these elements. But it's the same idea. Just as these elements are the building blocks of the natural world, and the elements of design make up the basic structure of good design.
I found this great podcast video by daytonkgraphics, I think it makes the elements pretty easy to understand with lots of visual examples. Please feel free to watch it now (it's just over 9 minutes):
In case you want to skip the video, here are the basics of the elements of design, in written form (definitions taken from Wikipedia). I also recommend this this fabulous little video by FreyaFire, for some easy to understand visuals. I have added some examples, either from my own work or designs I've found in my searching. Because the elements of design work well together some of the examples have more than one element in them, but I hope you understand I had to pick and choose. :)
LINE is most easily defined as a mark that spans a distance between two points (or the path of a moving point), taking any form along the way. As an art element, line pertains to the use of various marks, outlines and implied lines in artwork and design, most often used to define shape in two-dimensional work. Implied line is the path that the viewer's eye takes as it follows shapes, colors, and form along a path, but may not be continuous or physically connected, such as the line created by a dancer's arms, torso, and legs when performing an arabesque.
An example of wavy lines, from a fun tutorial found on this site.
My layout uses many types of lines, curvy, straight, and implied. Implied lines are ones that aren't all there. The stamped ampersand is an example of implied lines.
For some fun ways to use lines in your designs, check out this article.
SHAPE pertains to the use of areas in two dimensional space that can be defined by edges, setting one flat specific space apart from another. Shapes can be geometric (e.g.: square, circle, triangle, hexagon, etc.) or organic (such as the shape of a puddle, blob, leaf, boomerang, etc.) in nature. Shapes are defined by other elements of art: Space, Line, Texture, Value, Color, Form.SPACE by object or around object
It's easy to use shapes in scrapbooking, you probably don't even think about it. Add a mat to your photo and you've got a rectangle. Punch a leaf, you've got an organic shape. Cut a circle for your journaling spot and you've got yet another shape.
This layout has a lot of shapes in it, but the one you don't explicitly see is the strongest one of all in my opinion. I tend to design in triangles a lot.
A fun example of shape can be seen in this montage of designs I found on designlovefest. There are four different images here. Lots of shapes in each one, add them all together and they make even more fun shapes.
FORM may be created by the forming of two or more shapes or as three-dimensional shape (cube, pyramid, sphere, etc.). It may be enhanced by tone, texture and colour. Form is considered three-dimensional showing height, width and depth. Examples of these are sculpture, theatre play and figurines.
Form in scrapbooking is a little harder to apply because we have albums that can squish forms flat. However, I still like to add form, I love the dimensionality of it all. To see how to make this bow, see this tutorial.
And in case you're interested, this bow is doing just fine in my album, because it's made of cardstock, it's a little more resistant to smooshing.
COLOR pertains to the use of hue in artwork and design. Defined as primary colors (red, yellow, blue) which cannot be mixed in pigment from other hues, secondary colors (green, orange, purple) which are directly mixed from combinations of primary colors. Further combinations of primary and secondary colors create tertiary (and more) hues. Tint and Shade are references to adding variations in Value; other tertiary colors are derived by mixing either a primary or secondary color with a neutral color. e.g. Red + White = Pink.VALUE
Color is another easy element to incorporate in your scrapbooking. So easy that I'm not going to say much more about it, but I will show you a pretty picture. Using colors that work together on the color wheel is always a safe bet, but don't be afraid to do something unexpected. This room speaks to me, lots of great textures, but it's the colors that grab my attention first, turquoise and burnt orange with black and white just makes me happy.
TEXTURE is the quality of a surface or the way any work of art is represented. Lines and shading can be used to create different textures as well. For example, if one is portraying certain fabrics, one needs to give the feeling of the right texture so that it closely resembles what the artist is trying to convey.
Texture is easy to achieve in scrapbooking because so there are so many products available both with with actual and implied texture. Papers, ribbons, fabrics, if you want texture, it's there. This layout uses paper with a texture, the ribbon bit along the bottom, some floss, and the smooth finish on the alphabet. I'm a big fan of texture, can you tell?
There are also many papers that have photographed layers. This paper by Sassafras is a good example of implied texture.
Matt Lehman is a master of implied texture. His designs are so visually real, I want to touch the computer screen.
Mikey Burton is another designer that makes me sigh me every time I see his work. I first saw something he did while paging through a design magazine in Barnes & Noble last year. I said his name over and over until I got home and could look him up on Google. His old-fashioned, letter press-inspired work oozes texture.
SPACE is the area provided for a particular purpose. It may have two dimensions (length and width), such as a floor, or it may have three dimensions (length, width, and height). Space includes the background, foreground and middle ground. Space refers to the distances or areas around, between or within components of a piece. There are two types of space: positive and negative space. Positive space refers to the space of a shape representing the subject matter. Negative space refers to the space around and between the subject matter.
Perhaps the most well known variety of space in scrapbooking is white space. We here at write. click. scrapbook. are big fans of white space! See my first gallery layout for a great example:
Negative space can be very fun to explore in your designs, I love that there's not a music note physically represented, it's all created by negative space. Click here to read more on negative space.
And there you have it. Line, Shape, Form, Color, Texture, and Form, the elements of design. Some say there are seven, but I'm sticking with the majority here. I could easily focus on one single element all week, but we must move on, we've got principles and composition to learn about. Until tomorrow!